For the Banksy piece in Hosier Lane to have been destroyed by an overzealous cleaner is an absolute travesty. That the cleaners were sent in as a response to complaints from residents that they disliked the grafitti is akin to great and historical band venues being forced out of business in this town, due to dullards from the suburbs moving into where the action is, only to complain that there's noise that they didn't have to tolerate in North Balwyn and you people at the council should do your job for once and make it stop. Robert Doyle brushing the destruction aside, saying it wasn't the Mona Lisa and an honest mistake, is a scandal and indicates that work practices within the City of Melbourne are unlikely to change and we'll probably see something like this again.

The grafitti was there before them, the bands were there before them and, if they weren't aware of any of it, that's for lack of their own due diligence when they bought the property. Sell up for the handy profit offered by the ever increasing sales prices and piss off back to the burbs where everyone is tucked up in bed by 11pm.

People that lump all grafitti into one basket and cannot tell the difference between mindless tagging and a worthy piece of art that makes social, political and cultural commentary are morons and it is a pity these are the same morons writing letters to papers and calling talkback radio that then have unthinking bureaucrats and council doing their bidding.

The boot polish on the face and the afro shock-wigs are classic tools of oppression of African American people, used to mock and belittle the black people by depicting them as obvious objects of ridicule. None of the Jackson 5 were ever black black - they were only ever brown - and they never had great big clumps of hair standing bolt upright.

The guys clearly had a budget for the act, given the startlingly bright matching white suits they wore, if they'd simply got some proper brown make-up and fine afro wigs - even if they were 5 feet across - none of this would have been an issue. The fact that the people at Hey Hey had years and years of acts to choose from and chose that act shows that they have no better understanding of what is offensive now than they did 10 years ago when they got axed, or 20 or 30 years ago. It had always been a bit of an anachronistic embarrassment but, this time, they had someone on the spot who knew about the specific sensitivities and had the international clout to receive an immediate on-air apology.

And the idiots who are signing up for the Facebook group saying that Harry Connick is a PC idiot and just a spoilsport obviously have no idea of the outside world and the death sentence he would have been handing his career if he'd said nothing. Silence is, after all, just to tacitly support what had gone on.

Being a renowned control freak on everything he does - whether or not he actually has a producer's role - Daryl is the ultimate arbiter on the show and the one who must end up taking responsibility for it.

There are good people that work on Hey Hey, people that can create entertainment from content that doesn't require someone to be made to look like a fool, and if it wasn't for them there's no possible way I could go near the show. Daryl obviously follows the age old credo of surrounding yourself with talented people to make yourself look good but he stills comes across as the perverted uncle that smells of BO and stale beer who is going to try to finger your teenage niece as soon as he gets the opportunity. Unless they have living legend status, any women on the show are only going to be on because they look pretty and if they're a bit dim as well all the better because then we can all make jokes about them. There should have been a drinking game where you had to skull whenever Daryl made a comment about the most recently arrived beautiful/lovely/pretty/etc girl.

Having said that, Livinia Nixon has dived in my esteem since the second show, with her lack of knowledge of comic setups, talking over people on camera and sucking any creative oxygen out of the room by being critical of someone taking a chance such as saying "Wot cheeses me off is that" while pointing at the band who had gone for a bit in the intro.

But back to the point... Yes, you all are racist motheruckers - just as racist now as you were when you went to Cronulla to go Lebo-bashing - cheered on by Alan Jones, who should personally know a thing or two about bigotry - just as racist as when you thought it was a good thing when John Howard said he was glad that politicians were able to speak without having to consider political correctness, which was his only response to Pauline Hanson declaring in her maiden speech that Australia was being taken over by the Asians and brown people and the Abos were unpleasant to look at, you're just as racist as when you bought the Kevin 'Bloody' Wilson album because you pissed yourself at the song with the Abo getting more money on the dole and from benefits than Alan Bond in his prime, and you're all just as racist as when you laughed at the joke about the bloke driving through the outback, opening his door to knock down boongs, picking up the priest, almost knocking down the next boong only to have the priest say it was OK because he got him with his door.

I'd thought there might be some hope with the acknowledgment of the inhumane way this country treats asylum seekers and the apology to indigenous people but it seems I'm surrounded by inbred hick yokels who want to have a whinge about being expected to reach a civilised international standard for the treatment of fellow human beings. As much as I'll be tarred with your brush, I kinda hope there's an international characterisation of Australians as some backwoods, hillbilly type, ostracised by everyone else in the world so you can experience just what it's like and maybe gain some understanding about what's going on here.

Youse can all go and get fucked, ya cunts.

And it's not even a particularly witty use of strong language with that kind of run-up. If he'd spoken with his grown-up words, perhaps the story of the day would have been the point he was speaking to rather than him using the term shit-eating grin while having some issue about Gillard not scowling throughout question time.

I don't think Abbott's particularly bright. I think he's a wannabe dirty little dictator who would enforce a Catholic version of Sharia law on everyone if it was up to him. Do we know why he left the seminary and didn't go on to be come a priest? Apart from the fucking around we know he was doing at the time, I mean. Maybe he just couldn't handle having to change over to young boys once he was ordained.

When I was last writing, I was quite depressed at the cynicism of the Howard government and the inability of so many people to be able to see through the obvious deceptions and still be talking up the fear of an ALP government in regard to fiscal responsibility. The polls were all looking favourable and it didn't look like the Libs could possibly come through but we'd seen that before and they still pull it off.

When Beazley told us, "I. Want. The Job.", it looked like a lay down misère until the Tampa showed up and even fairly rational papers, like The Age, published 3/4 page photos on the front page, of an aerial view of the un-Christian invaders, praying on the deck to their savage god. At that point, Howard began to play on the racism that he'd been fostering in the populace since, rather than shutting down Pauline Hanson when she started with her xenophobic, uneducated rants, he didn't explicitly state that racism is bad and actually applauded the prospect of not having to care about political correctness in the public realm. If our politicians don't need to worry about being sensitive when dealing with the sly, slitty-eyed Asians, the godless towelheads or the unvaryingly alcoholic and abusive Abos then why should any normal white person living in the suburbs worry about it either?

If that weren't enough, by the time election day had come, on November 10, 2001, more of those brown infidels had launched an attack on the entire free world by flying planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in the US and there's no way anyone would take the risk of an untested government on the brink of a world war.

Personally, I don't think Beazley was ever a realistic prospect for Prime Minister. It was only that the Howard government had made such a mess of things up to Tampa that they were set to lose government regardless of who the alternative was - even the proverbial drover's dog. That line from Beazley - "I. Want. The Job." - during the debate pre-Tampa, still makes me cringe. It wasn't a line that he owned - it was a line of spin, of marketing, that he'd been very consciously fed by the backroom spinmeisters of the ALP that seemed to have complete control over how that election campaign was run.

Beazley couldn't sell the lines that he was fed and he looked embarrassed delivering them. But then, he looked embarrassed or uncomfortable quite often when he was leader. On top of not being a strong personality and having a couple of recurrent health problems, he was too much of a teddy bear. Look at him there, in that picture. He's towering over Howard and Ray Martin. It gives him a definite natural advantage as a party leader - Malcolm Fraser was a tall party leader, Gough Whitlam was a tall party leader - but Kim could never capitulate on that natural advantage because of the way that he held himself and because, regardless of how much weight he lost in the lead-up to that election, he always looked like a big, cuddly teddy bear.

I suspect it is an issue that Joe Hockey will come up against if he ever becomes leader of the Liberal Party. As much of a head-kicker as he may be in his actions, he still has that big, round neck that comes out to meet the bottom of where his chin should be, with the Droopy Dog speech type where he doesn't really move his lips enough to be clipped in his enunciation because his lips are such great slug-like sausages of flesh, and the perceived inches of soft flab all over his body that infer the cuddly bear body that doesn't lend itself to being a strong leader. I've never seen Joe Hockey in real life and I've not taken the time to observe how he stacks up, height wise, against the other members of the opposition but we have many opportunities to see him on camera, as a regular on breakfast TV and political interviews, and, with the framing and the tendency of the camera to add weight, comes across as someone that can't really be taken seriously.

In the run-up to the next election, with Mark Latham as leader, the ALP seemed to have taken the next generational step and instilled the party with new blood and a new energy. Surely the factional power brokers that installed Latham into the leadership position should have known that 1) Latham had a history of violence that was undeniable, well documented and would inevitably become an issue that the Libs would be able to exploit and 2) he was still prone to anger management issues and that those issues would likely be brought out in the undisciplined Latham under the pressure of leading a federal election campaign. For those deal makers to put Latham in that role, surely, was an act of gross stupidity and, if we're following the trail back, they're the source of an additional term of damaging Howard rule.

By the time election day came around - in fact, probably two days before that - Latham's attitude had wasted another strong lead in the polls over Howard and thrown the election away. It wasn't until the day after that loss that I saw the footage of the infamous handshake at the Sydney radio station, which was an act of physical aggression - you could almost call it assault - against Howard, shaking him around like a frail little rag doll and standing over him, asking threateningly, "You right?", while the cameras of the nation's media snapped and rolled tape. Political views aside, Howard was like the shrinking little grandfather that was likely to break a hip if he sneezed too hard. What a fucking idiotic cunt. And then to virtually go into hiding, not even communicating with fellow party members - people he'd supposedly been on the frontlines with in the trenches of the election battle - before addressing the media at an anonymous suburban park to announce his resignation over a very convenient malady. It was barely a surprise that he then started to act like a bitter spoilt brat, attacking everyone else in the ALP and insisting that the election loss was all their fault and he wasn't responsible at all. The only thing notable about the publication of his 'diaries', full of vitriol about how everyone else had it in for him, was that any publisher would bother to take it on and expect to make any profit out of it.

All I'm saying is that as large as the polls were saying the lead of the ALP going into the 2007 election was, you could never fully trust that they would translate into the actual election result.

Now it's 2009 and we've seen off Howard but things aren't so different in too many ways. What was traditionally the left of the political spectrum has shifted to the right of centre and there is no alternative for a those of us who retain some humanity and didn't get sucked into the promises of 12 years of Howard.

I hope I can clarify what's really going on behind the spin for you in future posts - in this post-Howard era and on the first 9/11 since Bush left office - and that you'll come with me on a journey of enlightenment.

After changing web servers and not having the sub-domain or blog up on my friend's server since late last year, there has just been too much that needs to be said and too much education that is crying out to be shared. So much of it seems so obvious but I think there's been too much self-involvement from too many people and we, as a nation, as the first world, have forgotten how to see anyone else around us. That's why I've resurrected the blog and will be looking to foster as much discussion and participation as I can.

AN academic hired by the NRL to educate rugby league players about women has sin-binned the Liberal Party over comments by Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey.

Mr Hockey said yesterday that his Labor counterpart Julia Gillard was popular because she had a high-media profile - "I'm not as pretty as Julia Gillard, obviously," Mr Hockey told reporters.

His comments came just weeks after Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan was forced to apologise to Ms Gillard for suggesting her childlessness made her less fit to lead the nation.

More moronic commentary from Joe Hockey. You've got to ask why he's doing it...

Is it just me that sees a strange coincidence between this and Wilson Tuckey coming out and saying that it's not too late to change leaders?

Watch this space for further developments.

SOURCE

Young workers ruling unnecessary: Hockey

Federal Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey says today's ruling on junior workers by the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission will confuse both business and workers.

The commission says it is apparent AWAs are designed to reduce wages and working conditions under WorkChoices to the detriment of children.

The commission has set out principles to protect New South Wales children on AWAs from losing their penalties and breaks without compensation.

But Mr Hockey says the Federal Government has included parental consent in the workplace laws to protect young workers.

"If you believe Mr Della Bosca and the Labor Party, it's a free-for-all against children with AWAs," he said.

"That's completely false. That's why we've been saying in our ads that you need the consent of parents or guardians if you are under 18 to sign an AWA."

Mr Hockey says under the Howard Government, teenage employment and wages for young people have both increased.

"One of the reasons why young people's wages have increased in real terms by three times the amount [they were] under Labor was because we have introduced a fairer and more flexible system," he said.

How the fuck is parental consent supposed to do anything when it comes to adolescents getting screwed over by unfair, underpaid AWAs? Is Hockey implying that parents have some sort of control over employers that compels them to make the AWA a fair and properly paid contract? What fantasy land does he think we're living in?

Parental consent does nothing to prevent employers exploiting junior workers. If they want to work, they have to convince their parents to consent, no matter what's on offer. Short of that, is Joe Hockey suggesting that juniors not work if the AWAs on offer aren't fair? Not really an option these days, when parts of the school curriculum involves things like working at MacDonalds for credit.

What Hockey completely ignores is the fact that the "fairness test" announced recently by John Howard does nothing to protect these junior workers as they enter the workforce. The test is designed to ensure that someone moving onto an AWA receives fair pay considerations for any penalty rates, holidays or any other working conditions lost by being moved to the AWA. But if someone is taking up new employment, there's no measure of what those conditions were. Ergo, it's a blank sheet on which any conditions the employer wants for whatever pay the employer wants can be writ.

Joe Hockey, stop trying to defend the indefensible. Your government has abused the power it won at the last general election and it's time you all just fucked off and let someone else come in and clean up the mess you've made.

SOURCE

Nursing a grudge
THERE'S never any money for nurses, but there's always extra money for teachers. Considering their performance in the classroom is appalling, why are they always in line for more money?

Teachers are entitled to four weeks' annual leave, so why do they take another eight weeks' annual leave, as well as curriculum days?

They should have all their student-free days on the holidays, as well as run catch-up classes for underachieving students, without being paid any extra money. I think taxpayers, parents and students are being ripped off.

For a change, wouldn't it be nice if the hardworking nurses in this country were given some credit in the form of money, not the pat on the back that the Government believes will pay our bills. We, along with doctors, do many hours of unpaid overtime to prop up an ailing health system, yet our wages and working conditions have been going backwards for years.

Not one government has ever considered rewarding nurses, but they will bend over backwards for teachers.
Ann Lowe, Malvern East

Listen honey, going the biff on teachers isn't going to redirect the money to you poor nurses. It might be a little hard to understand but that's just not the way things work.

You can't state as fact, "their performance in the classroom is appalling". While some from the right do like to get out and go teacher bashing, the great majority of people know that this is simply hyperbole and lies.

If you weren't aware, teachers and nurses are very much in the same basket when it comes to funding from governments. Teachers have been just as screwed over as you nurses in recent times. The unfortunate thing for nurses, as you've pointed out, is that you are basically emotionally blackmailed into working more for no money because the health system isn't properly funded. If you really wanted to be heard and maybe effect some change, try a work to rule campaign or refusing overtime. If everyone does it, you'll shortly have some attention.

Maybe you're just a bit jealous that the federal government has been focusing on teachers, with Julie Bishop and John Howard talking about bonus pay for exceptional teachers so as to provide incentive for teachers to better themselves. This isn't actually because they want to give more money to the better teachers. While they suggest they will give with one hand, what it actually does is take away more power for the federal government with the other hand, by attaching requirements such as what history curriculum is taught to high school students. (It's actually just a big ploy to stop people thinking for themselves and learning about some of the disgraceful events in this nation's history but Shhhh, don't tell anyone.)

If your letter is really an indication of where you're coming from, I'm surprised you got into nursing. You didn't really do it for the money did you? Where did you get the impression you were going to be raking it in? I hope that's not how the tertiary institutions are selling it. And I hope not too many other people are falling for it.

Tell you what, it's not too late to salvage this. Just quickly find yourself a nice bloke - ooh, you could probably snare yourself a rich doctor! - put your legs up and start counting the bonus coming to you in 9 months time. That way you'll be able to just stay at home living a life of leisure on handouts and not have to put up with any more of that crap from your patients.

Forest friendly
THE article by Tracee Hutchison "They don't get it" (Opinion, 12/5) and subsequent letters by Don Stokes and Karina Kanepe (14/5) display a disturbing ignorance about forests, wood and climate change.

Deforestation in Indonesia is disastrous because it permanently removes forest cover. But this is vastly different from Australian (and Tasmanian) forestry practices under which harvested areas are regenerated with replacement trees. Where this is sustainable — the annually harvested wood volume equals the rate of growth over the whole forest — there should be no net loss of carbon.

Using wood is one of the most positive things we can do to combat climate change. It is natural and renewable whereas substitutes such as concrete involve large emissions of greenhouse gases in their manufacture.

Similarly, using firewood from a sustainable source is one of the most environmentally friendly forms of home heating if it reduces electricity use.
Mark Poynter, Victorian spokesman, the Institute of Foresters of Australia

If logging practices in Australia are so sustainable why is there a need to increase the area logged into water catchments where the amount of water in our reservoirs is greatly affected by logging?

I'm not sure how happy Tasmania will be to find that they're not a part of Australia but maybe they're used to it. As for Mark's claim that 'there should be no net loss of carbon', does he realise that trees aren't made of carbon? That the carbon is released when the wood is burned? Or maybe he's talking about the amount of carbon dioxide in the environment process by the trees.

As for wood being 'one of the most environmentally friendly forms of home heating', is he insane? Slow combustion wood burners are incredibly polluting with the amount of smoke that is released. If all home heating was powered by wood burners, the skies would be permanently hazy and asthmatics and others with respiratory problems would be dropping all over the place.

This is a naive or deliberately deceptive missive from an industry that should face environmental realities and start to think about getting some new skills. And stop wasting everyone's time by trying to convince us you're all touchy-feelie warriors for the environment.

Taking the theatre out of ABC criticism
The ABC's new policies will give audiences a full range of views, writes Mark Scott. The Age, 18/10/06

IN MY early weeks as managing director, I have called on some of the ABC's harshest public critics. And almost to a man and woman, they have been at pains to point out how much they love the ABC.

Then comes the but - and as my father-in-law has often warned me, ignore everything before the but. There is a sense that the organisation has issues with balance and fairness, particularly through its news and current affairs content, although some critics would suggest across its entire content. We need to address the criticism carefully and comprehensively. To ignore it or reflexively dismiss it only serves to limit ourselves, and is at odds with the ethos of open debate and discourse that is central to our reason for being.

Instead of facing up to these criticisms, it is easy to take comfort in the market research that suggests the ABC is remarkably popular with its owners: the public. A recent Newspoll indicated 90 per cent of the public believed the ABC provided a valuable or very valuable service. And there is comfort in recent research by Young and Rubicam that said the only brand more popular in Australia than the ABC is Vegemite.

Within the ABC, it is easy to say that people like us, the ratings are reasonable and the critics are the ones who really don't get it. At times it does appear that criticism of the ABC takes the form of set-piece theatre: everyone knowing their lines and going through well-known rituals. But such an approach is unwise and misses the real point: is there substance in the criticism? Does the ABC have a problem with editorial values? It is an important question. It is very clear to me that this pattern of critique and reflexive defence needs to be challenged.

What I am outlining represents the ABC taking the lead to break this ritual. It is a challenge to both ourselves and our critics to learn some new steps and think afresh about how we deliver balance, diversity, impartiality. It is only reasonable, that as the public broadcaster using public money, the ABC set high standards for itself; higher standards than anyone else in the Australian media.

The public invests its trust in all ABC content, regardless of its source within the ABC. The new policies reflect this reality. The policies will ensure that ABC audiences can see and hear a broad range of viewpoints on matters of importance. The policies are contained in a document that runs to some 50 pages. It says upfront that as a creator, broadcaster and publisher of news and current affairs content, there is a requirement for impartiality. Each news and current affairs story and program must be impartial. For opinion programs or programs of topical and factual content, individual items of content can take a particular perspective, but the ABC must be able to demonstrate that it has provided audiences with a range of different perspectives on the subject under consideration on each platform, be it radio, television or online.

On contentious matters, we need to hear the full range of voices. We have taken another look at fairness and what it means to be impartial. Impartiality is a long-held expectation of our news coverage. Being a responsible public broadcaster is not synonymous with universal public popularity. The editorial policies now require the ABC to be impartial as a broadcaster and generator of content. As we assess the output of each of our platforms - ABC TV, Radio National, local stations such as 702 ABC Sydney - there is now the expectation that there is impartiality. That there is a demonstrated plurality of opinion and perspective.

The new category of opinion will be content presented from a partisan point of view about a matter of public contention. This content will be signposted as opinion and the impartiality test will be: has the ABC presented a plurality of views? And the ABC will expect staff to operate in a way that is reflecting key values of honesty, fairness, independence and respect.

We are looking to have three mechanisms for quality assurance around the implementation of our editorial policies. The first is regular program and performance review. Second, we have our established mechanism for dealing with public complaints.

A new mechanism is through the director of editorial policies, who will be able to commission research to provide better insight into whether we are meeting our own expectations. And when staff are dealing with a difficult decision in light of interpreting editorial policies, or I am concerned about a matter before broadcast or publication, the director of editorial policies will be able to provide independent advice.

Our journalists need to be able to undertake courageous journalism. Our radio broadcasters need to be lively and engaging and provocative at times to win and keep an audience. So, too, with television and online. Our policies promote the spirit of inquiry, not dampen it. As I have explained to our newsrooms, I want them to practise great journalism. To find the big stories and to hold those who seek to lead us to account for the promises they have made and the truths they espouse. But to achieve great journalism, you need to practise good journalism. Journalism that is fair, accurate, balanced and objective.

If there is a deference in these policies, it is to the primacy of ideas, to the intelligence of an audience, to the right of audience members to make up their own minds.

Mark Scott is managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This is an edited version of his speech to the Sydney Institute last night.

The critics that Mark Scott speaks of are, invariably, right-wing, conservative supporters of the Howard government - people like Andrew Bolt, Gerard Henderson (who is the executive director of the Sydney Institute - who happened to host the speech) and Piers Ackerman - people who support Australia being part of the invading forces in Iraq, the locking up of asylum-seekers in detention centres, the denial of climate change and the refusal to sign the Kyoto agreement, the new "work choices" industrial relations legislation that reduces the pay and conditions of Australian workers and the reduction in public funding for the ABC.

And the reason why they are loud, bully-boy critics of the ABC is because the ABC hasn't played the part of a cheer squad on each of these issues as they've arisen and they don't like being challenged. Mark Scott's new policy simply panders to these thugs and gives them more air time than they already have to spout their lies and to proselytise for their church of the far right... not to mention the more extreme groups of the right who will be compulsorily included so that we "hear the full range of voices" "on contentious matters".

For example, this means that if there's a program that deals in evolution - say Walking With Dinosaurs - which some claim is a contentious matter, the ABC would have to give air time to creationists to argue their case for creationism or, as they've repackaged it, Intelligent Design. A similar thing has happened in various states in the US in the schools' curricula with 'Intelligent Design' being taught in SCIENCE classes, in order to refute Darwin's theory of evolution and consolidate the belief that the Genesis book of the bible is a literal document of how God created all life.

Already, even without any new policy, 774 radio in Melbourne has filled their afternoon and drive programs with Richard Stubbs and Lindy Burns - two presenters that distinctly lack the intelligence of their predecessors who present programs that waste two and three hours every day covering crap like world massage day and whether footballers should be held up to greater accountability because they're role models.

Already we've got Helen Razer cutting off guests because they say that newly appointed, conservative ABC board member, Keith Windshuttle's denial of the Aboriginal stolen generation is akin to holocaust deniers - because she'll lose her job.

The new ABC policy marks the beginning of the end of the ABC being anything but an excuse for dead air that acts merely as an exercise in covering its own ass, lest the vocal, far-right, conservatives be offended.

Now let's take a look at who's at the controls of the ABC: Mark Scott is the Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was previously the senior political adviser to former NSW Liberal education minister, Terry Metherell.

According to a report by Crikey.com.au, while editor-in-chief of metropolitan newspapers at Fairfax, Scott overturned a decision by the editorial staff at The Age newspaper's to call for a change of government at the 2004 federal election. Accoding to Crikey, "a decision was taken to call for a change of government. That decision was then overturned by Mark Scott, Fairfax's head of metropolitan newspapers, who apparently made the rather extraordinary claim that backing [Opposition Leader Mark] Latham wasn't in the commercial interests of the company."

There wasn't a single definitive answer to the question but some of the factors that were brought up drew some parallels in Australian society with the conservative government. It's something incremental that people don't notice through any individual piece of change that happens but if you step back and look at the bigger picture, you can see the trend and add things together. Such as all this going on about Australian "Values" and the suggestion to require anyone who enters the country to undertake an oath to live by and defend these self same 'values'.

Here's a piece of commentary from a former County Court judge from last Saturday's Age:

Nothing concrete in PM's 'values'
By Peter Gebhardt
September 23, 2006

Australian rules football has been an evolving game and sometimes the evolution offends those who look for certainty. The pursuit of certainty is an understandable, but hopeless, chase.

It is in the context of the pursuit of certainty that the current debate - or debacle - about Australian "values" has arisen. I had a good friend, a valued theologian, who used to shudder when people resorted to "values". He would, were he alive today, be shuddering in a convulsive way. Of course, the current Prime Minister and, latterly, the Opposition Leader, have sought to capture the populist imagination, limited as it is, by trying to codify the values in a way that will satisfy the fears, prejudices and intolerances that the electorate has been fed unashamedly for the past decade. First, you create insecurities. Then you feed them to such a point that reason is displaced by unwarranted irrationality. And only this week Andrew Robb said that the Australian value-based regime is designed to give the community a sense of security. "In a sense we have become more tribal as we have become more global."

Last week, I saw The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the film about the Irish civil war over which the English right-wing press was apoplectic and director Ken Loach was deemed unworthy to be a citizen of England. What the film does demonstrate is the need to keep alive the historical memory and imagination so we are not driven into a kind of present-centred amnesia where we have forgotten what our pasts were about and how, like Australian rules, there is a continuum of change.

Respect for dissent used to be appreciated, now it is usurped by sedition, mostly practised by "the chattering classes" and "the cultural elites", whoever or whatever they may be.

It is the absence of conversation that is most destructive of the present. The philosopher Michael Oakeshott (and he's no soft leftie) in a marvellous essay, The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind, says: "As civilised human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves."

What he says is that there is a multiplicity of voices and they all need to be heard, to be a part of the public discourse.

"Multiculturalism" was an unfortunate linguistic appellation to use to reflect what was a growing concept to demonstrate that, after the end of the White Australia policy and the demise of the language test, we were able to accommodate a stream of migrants to help us build our society and to enrich the diversity of it. Consider eating.

I live in an area where many Greeks came. Many of them still do not speak English, but who would ever begrudge their contribution to the expanding nature of our society? Do we forget our name-calling of and our attitudes to wogs? Reliance upon "mateship" and "a fair go" is a brutal contradiction of the spiritual and democratic underpinning of those now beleaguered and battered war cries, mantras.

Respect for the law, respect for diversity and variety, respect for divergent views, respect for the environment and the future we bequeath, and respect for the rights and responsibilities citizen-to-citizen - the mutuality of relationships: none of these is the breeding ground of dull conformity as now would be imposed upon us in a none-too-subtle form of slavery.

If governments pre-eminently espouse policies and practices that appeal to the baser motives - greed, fear and prejudice - then there can be no doubt that the engendered outcomes will lead to civil disengagement and the growth of self-centred and aggressive individualism which cuts neighbour off from neighbour. Trust is usurped by distrust, love by hate.

I can understand that individuals may have moral or immoral dispositions, they may hold to certain beliefs. How a "country" can have "values" is beyond my comprehension and I suspect it is a jingoistic and/or xenophobic nonsense. We are told about "the American way of life" but, having lived there for three years of my adult life, neither I nor any American I met understood anything of the abstraction.

In an address to the National Press Club in January this year, the Prime Minister talked of social cohesion, which in my view cannot exist if there is no reciprocity. He also said: "A sense of shared values is our social cement." Pretty fluid sort of cement, where lying is now part of its make-up and, worse, that it is lying that doesn't worry anyone. So much for witnesses of truth!

Peter Gebhardt is a writer and former County Court judge.

I get the feeling that our politicians see a certain political expediency, at this moment, in being just a little racist to pick up what I guess is a big enough slab of the electorate to make a difference. The sad thing is they may be right and the sadder thing is what that says about our society.